Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America puts ideology front and center in the discu... more Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America puts ideology front and center in the discussion of party coalition change. Treating ideology as neither a nuisance nor a given, the analysis describes the development of the modern liberal and conservative ideologies that form the basis of our modern political parties. Hans Noel shows that liberalism and conservatism emerged as important forces independent of existing political parties. These ideologies then reshaped parties in their own image. Modern polarization can thus be explained as the natural outcome of living in a period, perhaps the first in our history, in which two dominant ideologies have captured the two dominant political parties.
"Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters a... more "Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that—such unusually competitive cases notwithstanding—people, rather than parties, should and do control presidential nominations. But for the past several decades, The Party Decides shows, unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.
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This replication archive provides formatted data and R code on the perceived ideology of U.S. Sen... more This replication archive provides formatted data and R code on the perceived ideology of U.S. Senators asked in three YouGov surveys in 2016 and one in 2021. The 2021 survey also asked about several prominent politicians beyond Senators. Specifically, the Rdata objects include data frames in which each row represents a pair of politicians (denoted in the first two columns) and columns 3, 4, and 5 indicate the number of survey respondents who evaluated the first to be more liberal/conservative, the second to be more liberal/conservative, or the number not able to rank them. The data and code included enable replication of all analyses in the corresponding manuscript.
Although prior scholarship has made considerable progress in measuring politicians’ positions, it... more Although prior scholarship has made considerable progress in measuring politicians’ positions, it has only rarely considered voters’ or activists’ perceptions of those positions. Here, we present a novel measure of U.S. senators’ perceived ideologies derived from 9,030 pairwise comparisons elicited from party activists in three 2016 YouGov surveys. By focusing on activists, we study a most-likely case for perceiving within-party ideological distinctions. We also gain empirical leverage from Donald Trump’s nomination and heterodox positions on some issues. Our measure of perceived ideology is correlated with nominate but differs in informative ways: senators with very conservative voting records were sometimes perceived as less conservative if they did not support Trump. A confirmatory test shows these trends extended into 2021. Even among activists, perceived ideology appears to be anchored by prominent people as well as policy positions.
An increasing number of scholars are using longitudinal social network data to try to obtain esti... more An increasing number of scholars are using longitudinal social network data to try to obtain estimates of peer or social influence effects. These data may provide additional statistical leverage, but they can introduce new inferential problems. In particular, while the confounding effects of homophily in friendship formation are widely appreciated, homophily in friendship retention may also confound causal estimates of social influence in longitudinal network data. We provide evidence for this claim in a Monte Carlo analysis of the statistical model used by Christakis, Fowler, and their colleagues in numerous articles estimating "contagion" effects in social networks. Our results indicate that homophily in friendship retention induces significant upward bias and decreased coverage levels in the Christakis and Fowler model if there is non-negligible friendship attrition over time.
Understanding how the Tea Party has affected congressional elections and roll call voting helps u... more Understanding how the Tea Party has affected congressional elections and roll call voting helps us understand not only an important political move-ment, but how movements affect politics more generally. We investigate four channels for the movement to influence political outcomes: activists, constit-uent opinion, group endorsement activity and elite-level self-identification. We find consistent evidence that activists mattered both electorally and for roll call voting on issues of importance to the movement. Constituent opin-ion had virtually no impact on either political outcome. Group endorsement activity had possible effects on elections, but mostly no effect on congressional voting. Self-identification among elites did not enhance—or harm—Republican electoral fortunes, but did affect congressional votes important to the move-ment. These divergent results illustrate how movement politics can influence outcomes through multiple channels and call into question the usefulness of the...
The power of populist political appeals has been on the rise in Europe particularly as the eects ... more The power of populist political appeals has been on the rise in Europe particularly as the eects of the nancial crisis have taken their toll on increasing numbers of voters. Racist and anti-immigrant attitudes are generally associated with the political right, but they do not have to be since empirically the association varies from country to country. This paper argues that the way in which the party system shapes ideology in a country determines how issues will be transfered on the left-right divide. Traditional views on the place of extremist parties within the political spectrum claim that the number of parties will result from the number of issues relevant in the society plus one and the success of extremist parties will depend on the relevance of the right wing agenda in the context of specic societal cleavages. Yet if the political space in which parties compete is an ideological space, one in which voters’ lack of information will be replaced with ideological cues when making...
• Identifiers of the two major political parties are increasingly ideologically distinct, with co... more • Identifiers of the two major political parties are increasingly ideologically distinct, with conservatives more likely to be Republicans and liberals more likely to be Democrats. This is sometimes termed “sorting.” • Identifiers of the two major political parties increasingly dislike one another, what is sometimes termed “affective polarization.” • These divisions are strongest among the most politically informed and involved.
ABSTRACTAs professors, we seek not only to impart knowledge about issues and concepts in American... more ABSTRACTAs professors, we seek not only to impart knowledge about issues and concepts in American politics but also to engage and inspire students to become more knowledgeable and more active in politics. This article explains how a student-run exit poll conducted on Election Day 2016 accomplished both goals. Seven faculty members from four universities pooled our students and carried out an exit poll in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, and Ohio. By the time the polls closed, our students had spoken to more than 2,300 respondents, providing a memorable experience and creating a shared dataset that served as the centerpiece for many final class projects. Through this project, students gained hands-on experience in survey design, sampling, research ethics, polling, and data analysis.
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2016
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are internally divided. Each contains a party regular ... more Both the Republican and Democratic parties are internally divided. Each contains a party regular wing, which is interested in winning office and in the compromises necessary to govern. And each contains an ideological wing, which is interested in close adherence to the core coalition of the party. But the nature of the cleavage is very different within the parties. Among Democrats, the cleavage is mild, with most members belonging to the party regular camp, to the chagrin of ideologues, who are for the most part Bernie Sanders supporters. The cleavage among Republicans, though, is so deep that the party could not find a way to bridge it in the so-called invisible primary for 2016, creating an opening for Donald Trump, who is from neither camp.
Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America puts ideology front and center in the discu... more Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America puts ideology front and center in the discussion of party coalition change. Treating ideology as neither a nuisance nor a given, the analysis describes the development of the modern liberal and conservative ideologies that form the basis of our modern political parties. Hans Noel shows that liberalism and conservatism emerged as important forces independent of existing political parties. These ideologies then reshaped parties in their own image. Modern polarization can thus be explained as the natural outcome of living in a period, perhaps the first in our history, in which two dominant ideologies have captured the two dominant political parties.
"Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters a... more "Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that—such unusually competitive cases notwithstanding—people, rather than parties, should and do control presidential nominations. But for the past several decades, The Party Decides shows, unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.
"
This replication archive provides formatted data and R code on the perceived ideology of U.S. Sen... more This replication archive provides formatted data and R code on the perceived ideology of U.S. Senators asked in three YouGov surveys in 2016 and one in 2021. The 2021 survey also asked about several prominent politicians beyond Senators. Specifically, the Rdata objects include data frames in which each row represents a pair of politicians (denoted in the first two columns) and columns 3, 4, and 5 indicate the number of survey respondents who evaluated the first to be more liberal/conservative, the second to be more liberal/conservative, or the number not able to rank them. The data and code included enable replication of all analyses in the corresponding manuscript.
Although prior scholarship has made considerable progress in measuring politicians’ positions, it... more Although prior scholarship has made considerable progress in measuring politicians’ positions, it has only rarely considered voters’ or activists’ perceptions of those positions. Here, we present a novel measure of U.S. senators’ perceived ideologies derived from 9,030 pairwise comparisons elicited from party activists in three 2016 YouGov surveys. By focusing on activists, we study a most-likely case for perceiving within-party ideological distinctions. We also gain empirical leverage from Donald Trump’s nomination and heterodox positions on some issues. Our measure of perceived ideology is correlated with nominate but differs in informative ways: senators with very conservative voting records were sometimes perceived as less conservative if they did not support Trump. A confirmatory test shows these trends extended into 2021. Even among activists, perceived ideology appears to be anchored by prominent people as well as policy positions.
An increasing number of scholars are using longitudinal social network data to try to obtain esti... more An increasing number of scholars are using longitudinal social network data to try to obtain estimates of peer or social influence effects. These data may provide additional statistical leverage, but they can introduce new inferential problems. In particular, while the confounding effects of homophily in friendship formation are widely appreciated, homophily in friendship retention may also confound causal estimates of social influence in longitudinal network data. We provide evidence for this claim in a Monte Carlo analysis of the statistical model used by Christakis, Fowler, and their colleagues in numerous articles estimating "contagion" effects in social networks. Our results indicate that homophily in friendship retention induces significant upward bias and decreased coverage levels in the Christakis and Fowler model if there is non-negligible friendship attrition over time.
Understanding how the Tea Party has affected congressional elections and roll call voting helps u... more Understanding how the Tea Party has affected congressional elections and roll call voting helps us understand not only an important political move-ment, but how movements affect politics more generally. We investigate four channels for the movement to influence political outcomes: activists, constit-uent opinion, group endorsement activity and elite-level self-identification. We find consistent evidence that activists mattered both electorally and for roll call voting on issues of importance to the movement. Constituent opin-ion had virtually no impact on either political outcome. Group endorsement activity had possible effects on elections, but mostly no effect on congressional voting. Self-identification among elites did not enhance—or harm—Republican electoral fortunes, but did affect congressional votes important to the move-ment. These divergent results illustrate how movement politics can influence outcomes through multiple channels and call into question the usefulness of the...
The power of populist political appeals has been on the rise in Europe particularly as the eects ... more The power of populist political appeals has been on the rise in Europe particularly as the eects of the nancial crisis have taken their toll on increasing numbers of voters. Racist and anti-immigrant attitudes are generally associated with the political right, but they do not have to be since empirically the association varies from country to country. This paper argues that the way in which the party system shapes ideology in a country determines how issues will be transfered on the left-right divide. Traditional views on the place of extremist parties within the political spectrum claim that the number of parties will result from the number of issues relevant in the society plus one and the success of extremist parties will depend on the relevance of the right wing agenda in the context of specic societal cleavages. Yet if the political space in which parties compete is an ideological space, one in which voters’ lack of information will be replaced with ideological cues when making...
• Identifiers of the two major political parties are increasingly ideologically distinct, with co... more • Identifiers of the two major political parties are increasingly ideologically distinct, with conservatives more likely to be Republicans and liberals more likely to be Democrats. This is sometimes termed “sorting.” • Identifiers of the two major political parties increasingly dislike one another, what is sometimes termed “affective polarization.” • These divisions are strongest among the most politically informed and involved.
ABSTRACTAs professors, we seek not only to impart knowledge about issues and concepts in American... more ABSTRACTAs professors, we seek not only to impart knowledge about issues and concepts in American politics but also to engage and inspire students to become more knowledgeable and more active in politics. This article explains how a student-run exit poll conducted on Election Day 2016 accomplished both goals. Seven faculty members from four universities pooled our students and carried out an exit poll in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, and Ohio. By the time the polls closed, our students had spoken to more than 2,300 respondents, providing a memorable experience and creating a shared dataset that served as the centerpiece for many final class projects. Through this project, students gained hands-on experience in survey design, sampling, research ethics, polling, and data analysis.
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2016
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are internally divided. Each contains a party regular ... more Both the Republican and Democratic parties are internally divided. Each contains a party regular wing, which is interested in winning office and in the compromises necessary to govern. And each contains an ideological wing, which is interested in close adherence to the core coalition of the party. But the nature of the cleavage is very different within the parties. Among Democrats, the cleavage is mild, with most members belonging to the party regular camp, to the chagrin of ideologues, who are for the most part Bernie Sanders supporters. The cleavage among Republicans, though, is so deep that the party could not find a way to bridge it in the so-called invisible primary for 2016, creating an opening for Donald Trump, who is from neither camp.
Just what are political parties? If they are not strictly hierarchical organizations but nonethel... more Just what are political parties? If they are not strictly hierarchical organizations but nonetheless manage to coordinate and control much of politics, how do they do so? This chapter looks at the use of network theory and methodology to examine modern political parties. The authors survey the history of research utilizing a network approach to studying parties. They suggest how a network model surpasses some of the limitations of the familiar tripartite party model of the parties in government, in elections, and as organization. The authors advocates further research on how network parties make collective decisions, why American parties are organized as networks, and how they evolve.
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